If you or your institution has a blog, the information below is very important to you. If you don’t have a blog, but are considering starting one, the same applies to you as well.

I first encountered this on John Fea’s blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home (which itself is an endless source of material for me). The original post is here: Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us.

going-viralFrom John’s original post: Here are the “10 ingredients that will help increase the shareability of your content.” (From the Huffington Post–click the link to see how Kagan develops each point with evidence from his study):

  1. Long form content gets more social shares than short form content.
  2. Having at least one image in your post leads to more Facebook shares.
  3. Having at least one image in your post leads to more Twitter shares.
  4. Invoke awe, laughter or amusement.  Appeal to people’s narcissistic side.
  5. People love to share lists and infographs.
  6. If you make a list, make it with 10 items.
  7. People share content that looks trustworthy.
  8. Getting one “extra influencer” to share you article has a multiplier effect.
  9. Re-promote your old content.
  10. Tuesday is the best day to publish content.

(If you click through to John’s post you can see he followed several of these tenets in his own post.)

Don’t forget to read John’s original post here or go to Noah Kagan’s original article that inspired John’s post.

Let us know what you think about these and add your own thoughts below.